Segment review #4, Games 31-40
The early season has melted away and the Edmonton Oilers are a game away from reaching the halfway point of the 82-game slate. That will occur in Chicago on Thursday night, exactly 3 months after their season got underway with a ghastly 6-0 home defeat to Winnipeg Jets.
That poor home opener was followed by a couple of equally unsettling regulation losses to non-playoff teams, setting off alarm bells in Oil Country that the locals were repeating their dismal start from a year ago. That 2-9-1 run resulted in a coaching change and saw them 10 points out of a playoff berth on American Thanksgiving.
Incoming coach Kris Knoblauch righted the ship a year ago, and has done so again in 2024-25 as the returning bench boss, a lot more expediently this time around. The squad’s incremental progress shows up nicely in the reviews we traditionally do here at the Cult of Hockey after every 10 games. With the completion of Game 40 it’s time for the latest reassuring edition which reflects the club’s steady rise back towards the upper echelon of the standings.
Season to date by segment
2024-25
Games 1 –10: 4-5-1, .450 | 22 GF, 35 GA | 343 SF, 261 SA | .930 PDO
Games 11-20: 6-3-1, .650 | 33 GF, 27 GA | 318 SF, 249 SA | .995 PDO
Games 21-30: 8-2-0, .800 | 42 GF, 22 GA | 314 SF, 281 SA | 1.055 PDO
Games 31-40: 7-2-1, .750 | 35 GF, 25 GA | 304 SF, 258 SA | 1.018 PDO
The turnaround from the poor start started to gain momentum in Games 11-20, but greatly accelerated in the second quarter of the season. Consider that as recently as American Thanksgiving (Nov 21) the club sat in 10th in the West by points percentage; today they rank 5th with a decent amount of breathing room and considerable upward momentum.
Briefly stepping beyond our 10-game focus, let’s combine the above data into a pair of 20-game sets representing the first and second quarters of the season:
Games 1 – 20: 10-8-2, .550 | 55 GF, 62 GA | 661 SF, 510 SA | .962 PDO
Games 21-40: 15-4-1, .775 | 77 GF, 47 GA | 618 SF, 539 SA | 1.037 PDO
Note how the shot totals at both ends were marginally worse in the second quarter, which is surely due to score effects. The Oilers were protecting a lead for a far greater proportion of clock time (roughly 2 more hours) in that set of games, and correspondingly trying to overcome a deficit for about 2 fewer hours. (The score was tied about 30% of the time in both samples.)
One outcome was that the conversion rates were vastly better at both ends of the sheet, with team shooting percentage soaring from 8.3% to 12.5% in the second 20, save percentage from .879 to .913. Combine superior percentages at both ends with solidly positive shot shares, and wins are the inevitable result.
In the 10-game set just completed, the Oilers produced 35/60=58% of the goals. That lines up nicely with the video analysis we do at the Cult of Hockey, in which Edmonton had a whopping 59% of the Grade A shots in all situations and that same (high) share specifically at 5v5. Our counts of the highest danger, 5-alarm shots had the Oilers at 57% in both cases. (Data here, summarized at the bottom of the document.)
The fourth 10-game segment, like the third, began with a hugely disappointing loss on home ice to a fellow contender. As was the case last time, the Oil responded with a pair of winning streaks of at least 3 games apiece. The wins were, however, constructed differently in the more recent set; there were no 6-goal eruptions that happened no fewer than 4 times in Games 21-30. Instead, the squad tightened up their defensive play after being burned 6-5 by Florida in Game 31. In their next 9 games they scored exactly 3 “real” (non-empty net, non-shootout) goals in every single game, and won 7 of the 9 by holding their opponents to 2 or fewer.
With that extended run of solid results, the Oilers have begun to make some space for themselves above the playoff cut line even as they remain in a dogfight for the top 3 in the Pacific with similarly-hot Vegas and Los Angeles.
Oilers won a lot of games by similar scores last January, never blowing anyone out but always seeming to come out on top. Check out this 10-game segment (Games 36-45, so not previously identified as such here) that wrapped up their remarkable 16-game winning streak.
Siimilar goal production as this last while, and no hiccups at all of the sort Oilers suffered in California ten days ago. That said, while 7-1-1 is not quite perfect it is pretty darn good and fans of the squad should be happy with its direction. Bearing in mind the group is trying to manage its way through a second consecutive 100+ game season, efficiency really matters.
Goalies
Let’s take a look at how each Oiler performed on the individual level in this most recent 10-game stretch starting as always with the netminders. They were not mentioned by name or position in the headline, but are core contributors to the “good defence” mentioned therein.
It was more of the same for Stu Skinner, who backed up a solid 5-2-0, 2.17, .924 in the last segment with similarly excellent 5-1-1, 2.30, .914 this time around. His rough start to the current season is now many miles of blacktop in the rearview.
Backup Calvin Pickard continues to start every third game with serviceable results, especially in the win column. He collected 2 W’s in 3 starts in the most recent segment, pretty much standard fare for the veteran pro.
Defencemen
The pairing of Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard still topped the club for ice time, though by a narrowing margin. But their results stood head and shoulders above the crowd in Games 31-40, with powerplay whiz Bouchard leading the way in assists, points, shots and TOI, while the all-rounder Ekholm ruled the roost in goals, shooting percentage and plus.
The plus/minus column indicates the rest of the crew basically held their own on the goals for and against front, though that doesn’t tell the whole story about special teams. The sometimes-pair of Darnell Nurse and Brett Kulak did yeoman work on the penalty kill unit in particular (each was on the ice for 0 goals and single-digit shots against in about a quarter of an hour on the unit).
Ty Emberson has also found a home on the PK (paired with Ekholm), leaving Troy Stecher without a role on special teams, playing third pairing minutes at 5v5, and watching from on high in the most recent game. Stecher somehow managed to lead the team in PiM with 10 which he took in rapid succession over a 2-game span. Strangely, Stecher was the Oiler in the box for 5 consecutive kills: the last 4 against the Ducks, and the first vs. the Utahns. To their credit his teammates had his back and killed off all 10 minutes.
Forwards
For the fourth segment in a row, Leon Draisaitl topped the scoring register, which is beginning to look less and less like an accident. Granted it’s been close each time including two actual ties with Connor McDavid where Draisaitl owned the NHL-approved tie-breaker (more goals). Fair to say, though, that the two-headed monster that drives Edmonton’s offence has never been more egalitarian than in the first half of 2024-25. Draisaitl has been superb all season long and shows few signs of slowing down.
For his part McDavid hit something of a goal-scoring drought in recent weeks, but his playmaking chops remain nonpareil as he continues to maintain his career average of an apple a day. I speculate that “game management” is part of his regimen as well; at this point the regular season is largely about getting and being ready for the playoffs.
Last time we detailed how the rest of Edmonton’s forwards had raised their goal production from just 6 in the first segment to 13 and then to 23. In the fourth segment that group pretty much maintained that level with 20 goals, though it’s fair to point out that in each of the last two 10-game sets, powerplay staples Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins chipped in 5 and 4 goals respectively. Which still means the depth guys have been delivering over a goal per game, very useful in what has seemed a succession of 3-2 victories.
Right wingers Viktor Arvidsson and Connor Brown produced the best offensive results among the supporting cast with 7 points apiece in 10 games, all but 1 of them (by Arvidsson on the second powerplay unit) coming at even strength. Adam Henrique matched Arvidsson’s 3 goals as tops among those forwards outside the first unit. 3 goals doesn’t sound like a lot but over 10 games it translates to 25 goals per 82 which is useful from down the line-up, even if it’s different guys that hit that mark from one segment to the next.
Player grades
We close in our usual fashion by reviewing the set of 10 games through the lens of our own subjective ratings here at the Cult of Hockey. Regular readers will know that we grade on a scale of 1 to 10, the performance of every Edmonton Oilers player in every game the team plays, based on a combination of observation and interpretation of statistical output. Here are average grades for Games 31-40 along with our customary thumbnail comment summarizing each player’s contribution over that span:
Results by grader, fourth segment:
- David Staples — 5 games, 3-1-1, average grade 5.9
- Bruce McCurdy — 3 games, 2-1-0, average grade 5.4
- Kurt Leavins – 2 games, 2-0-0, average grade 5.8
- Segment totals – 10 games, 7-2-1, average grade 5.7
- Game-by-game grades, season-to-date (spreadsheet)
- Segment review, Games 1-10
- Segment review, Games 11-20
- Segment review, Games 21-30
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